Post by fuguestate on Jul 27, 2018 16:37:46 GMT
I'm not actually directing any of this at the composer personally, but in general at a class of compositional techniques that I perceive as having been abused to a point that all art has been distilled away, leaving only an impenetrable dry husk that resembles art in form but has no real artistic merit in reality.
Basically, my beef is that if a particular compositional process is completely automatable, such that zero human input is required, then one has to question whether it's really art, as opposed to, say, creating a multiplication table purely mechanically and without any consideration of aesthetics or any of the other qualities one might associate with art. Except that multiplication tables are actually useful for something; perhaps a better comparison is tabulating the number of hairs you have in your naval as a function of time, and then posting the resulting series of numbers and declaring it "art" by fiat. I'm sure, in this strange world of ours, there exist some who can derive enjoyment just from staring at a series of essentially meaningless numbers, but I challenge the notion that such a thing can be called "art".
I think the eminent Kristofer Emerig said it best, and I quote from the Other Forum:
Basically, my beef is that if a particular compositional process is completely automatable, such that zero human input is required, then one has to question whether it's really art, as opposed to, say, creating a multiplication table purely mechanically and without any consideration of aesthetics or any of the other qualities one might associate with art. Except that multiplication tables are actually useful for something; perhaps a better comparison is tabulating the number of hairs you have in your naval as a function of time, and then posting the resulting series of numbers and declaring it "art" by fiat. I'm sure, in this strange world of ours, there exist some who can derive enjoyment just from staring at a series of essentially meaningless numbers, but I challenge the notion that such a thing can be called "art".
I think the eminent Kristofer Emerig said it best, and I quote from the Other Forum:
It's an interesting notion, this hegemony of originality, and I believe I follow its queer logic:
If the measure of originality is the application of practices which other composers eschew (perhaps out of prudence, good taste, or knowledge), and the highest virtue attainable is the quality of originality, then it follows that the best practices are those which are the least efficacious, and the least universally accepted by a consensus of competent composers.
This philosophy is commendable, as it greatly streamlines the compositional workflow. By making poor choices, one excels, and who can lose in such a game? The notion of standing on the shoulders of giants is obviated, degeneracy is equated to progress, and the art descends into an Alice in Wonderlandish universe in which clocks run backward and any disjointed spontaneous event becomes more meaningfully progressive than a smooth, integral evolutionary increment built solidly on the past.
Had this epiphany come earlier, I'd have squandered less time on the trivialities of the historical masters' techniques, knowing that the swiftest path to success (measured along that obstinately one-dimensional metric of originality) is to simply do something - anything, which they hadn't.
If the measure of originality is the application of practices which other composers eschew (perhaps out of prudence, good taste, or knowledge), and the highest virtue attainable is the quality of originality, then it follows that the best practices are those which are the least efficacious, and the least universally accepted by a consensus of competent composers.
This philosophy is commendable, as it greatly streamlines the compositional workflow. By making poor choices, one excels, and who can lose in such a game? The notion of standing on the shoulders of giants is obviated, degeneracy is equated to progress, and the art descends into an Alice in Wonderlandish universe in which clocks run backward and any disjointed spontaneous event becomes more meaningfully progressive than a smooth, integral evolutionary increment built solidly on the past.
Had this epiphany come earlier, I'd have squandered less time on the trivialities of the historical masters' techniques, knowing that the swiftest path to success (measured along that obstinately one-dimensional metric of originality) is to simply do something - anything, which they hadn't.